Sunday, February 27, 2011

I picked this article because although the whole site could be useful to anyone who decides to read it, I thought that this would be very useful to us as future teachers. This article was about an education program that they used in New York that was developed to help them be more prepared for “awkward situations” in the classroom regarding a student’s sexual identity or sexual orientation. It trained them about how to handle the situation, for example what terminology to use when approaching that type of situation. While I was online I decided to do this type of post and I went searching for articles, videos, pictures, and other information that would relate to this topic and here is what I ended up with...

-These two videos, which you may have already seen on tv, both respond to the misuse and negative connotation of the phrase “That’s so gay”. I think they related to this article because it is all about finding the right terms and calling something gay because it is different or you don’t like it or it isn’t right is not the right use of the word. Instead of using “that’s so gay” to describe something, we should use real adjectives. If we don’t and we continue to use “That’s so gay” we are just contributing to a downward spiral of subconsciously spreading homophobia and also making the word gay a synonym for adjectives like different, wrong, ugly, etc. It is all about wording.

-This video is a students personal viewpoint on Gay-Straight Alliances within American Public Schools. This relates to the article I read because this student is strictly emphasizing how important it is to educate people and especially those in public schools who deal with children. Ignorance of the topic just leads to fear and uncertainty among both teachers and students. This student is gay himself and uses his own experiences to express how difficult it is for LGBT students in public schools, admitting that he didn’t even “come out“ until his freshman year of college though he knew he was gay in middle school. He was just scared and worried about what would happen and what people would say and/or do. He even shows pictures of two young men who were murdered because of their sexuality. I think this video does a good job of explaining how important education of this subject is and how much influence one person can have if they know how to behave/know what to do in a given situation.

And last but not least…

-This video is another one that was made by a student. In the article it mentions teachers supporting and engaging in organizations like GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance). This female student was president of the GSA at her high school the second year it ran as an organization/club in her high school and this video takes you through what it was like for her and the members to gain support and recognition through the school, committee members and the community. It is pretty interesting and I thought it related directly to the text.

1 comment:

You have a lot of strong videos here to support Gays. The celebrity ones are very powerful due to the media. Having someone say something on an issue is always more influential than some random person off the street so they are essential to the reformation of Gays' rights.